http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
RECENTLY, I took part in a discussion with a group of community leaders about
the topic of tolerance here in Philadelphia. The point was there are some who
worry that in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Muslims are
experiencing a prejudicial backlash.

The concern is appropriate, but the good news is that here, as in most of the
United States, the feared rise of anti-Muslim fervor has simply not occurred.
The very few local incidents that can be ascribed to such a bias have been
roundly and rightly condemned by virtually everyone in town.

Indeed, the real story about this fear is that the entire country has united
to make sure such a thing does not happen.

From the president on down, the dominant sentiment has been one of
inclusiveness toward Muslims and a refusal to allow our anger over the terror
attacks to spill over into hate-filled rhetoric or action. President Bush -
and indeed the rest of the country - has been insisting that Islam is a
religion of peace that forbids terror and the murder of innocents.

This fervent defense of Islam has even led the White House and some in the
media to grant recognition to many Muslim and Arab-American groups that don't
deserve it. Islamist extremists like those at the Council on American-Islamic
Relations have been given a legitimacy that their support for anti-Israel
terrorism should have denied them.

Far from being a repeat of December 1941, when in the aftermath of Pearl
Harbor Japanese-Americans were rounded up and sent to detention camps, even
radical American Muslims are getting invitations to the White House!

Thus, when some Philadelphians expressed fear that a backlash against Muslims
was just around the corner, I expressed skepticism. When one participant in
the discussion said that tolerance would suffer if a terrorist set off a
small nuclear device, I felt compelled to point out that if a nuclear weapon
were set off here, the least of our problems would be whether or not people
were being nice to each other.

That said, those who want to promote tolerance are to be applauded, even if
some of their fears are exaggerated.

But similar fears for the communal peace of the State of Israel are all too
real. The rising tensions between the Israeli Arab minority and the Jewish
majority of the country can no longer be ignored.

DISLOYAL KNESSET MEMBER

The latest focal point for this problem is the conduct of Azmi Beshara, an
Arab member of Israel's Knesset.

Beshara is the embodiment of the dilemma of the approximately 15 percent of
Israeli citizens who are Arabs. He wants all the benefits of citizenship in
the Middle East's only democracy, but isn't willing to give any loyalty to
the state in return.

Beshara, who was first elected to the Knesset in 1996 on a Communist Party
ticket, has made a habit of flaunting his contempt for the democracy in whose
parliament he serves.

During a visit to Syria, a country that is in a state of war against Israel,
Beshara gave a speech in which praised Hezbollah terrorists who have attacked
Israel. That the speech was given to a Damascus audience that included
notorious terrorists, including Ahmed Jibril and Sheikh Nassan Nasrallah, was
only the icing on the cake.

Beshara has also arranged illegal visits for Israeli-Arabs to Syria in
contravention of Israeli law and despite the fact that legal channels are
available for family reunions.

In response, Israeli authorities feel enough is enough, and have initiated a
prosecution of Beshara for support of a terrorist organization. The Knesset
voted 61-30 last week to lift his parliamentary immunity enabling the case to
proceed.

Far from exhibiting any diffidence about these acts, Beshara is brazen in his
contempt for Israel. He told The New York Times that he is "not an Israeli
patriot." He advocates the dismantling of Israel as a Jewish state and wants
it to drop its flag, national anthem and the right of Jews to come home to
Israel as immigrants.

Even worse, he has the chutzpah to depict himself as a victim of oppression,
and has gained sympathetic coverage in American newspapers like The New York
Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Others among the Knesset's Arab caucus, including those who despise Beshara
as a publicity hound, have expressed the same beliefs. Indeed, Talab El-Sana,
a Knesset member from a rival Israeli Arab party, publicly justified a
Palestinian terror attack in August on innocent pedestrians outside the
Israeli Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv.

Last fall, Israeli-Arab rioting in sympathy with the violence launched by the
Palestinian Authority shocked Israel. The nation's answer was to vow that
inequities in funding between Jewish and Arab townships would be erased.

But increasingly the problem facing Israel is no longer one of whether or not
its Arab minority is given fair treatment in the division of patronage and
school funding. Rather, it is a situation where the minority feels itself
sufficiently powerful that it can put itself on the side of those who are at w
ar with the state.

Ironically, tensions between Jews and Arabs within Israel have grown worse
since the signing of the Oslo peace accords.

Far from satisfying Palestinian ambitions, the empowerment of Yasser Arafat
and the Palestinian Authority in the territories seemed only to heighten a
sense of Palestinian identity among Israeli Arabs. As with international
media criticism of the Jewish state, the more concessions Israel has made to
Arafat, the greater the spirit of disaffection on the part of Arab citizens
of Israel.

This disintegration of loyalty on the part of the Arab minority makes the
prospect of any final peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian
Authority even more perilous.

It does not take much of an imagination to conjure up the possibility of
increased anti-Israel agitation on the part of Arab Israelis, even in the
unlikely event of a peace settlement. But the difference then will be that
the next "intifada" will no longer take place in those parts of Judea and
Samaria where Arafat's rule will be sovereign. Instead, the next "uprising"
will be in the Galilee. At that point, Azmi Beshara's current calls for
"cultural autonomy" of Israeli Arabs may become a demand for Israel to cede
areas inside its pre-1967 borders to the new state of Palestine.

MULTICULTURALISM HAS A PRICE

Anyone who thinks this a fantasy should think back just a few years to when
it was unimaginable for Israel to even contemplate giving up all of the "West
Bank," not to mention parts of Jerusalem as both former prime minister Ehud
Barak and former President Bill Clinton advocated last year.

Tolerance is always imperative, but no state or people is required to be
tolerant of those who wish to destroy them.

In a country such as the United States, where no minority can conceivably
threaten the security of the majority, tolerance of differing cultures - even
those that are antithetical to democracy - is possible. Multiculturalism may
be a foolish goal that undermines national unity, but the price of such folly
here is cheap.

In Israel, there is no such margin of error.

The dilemma is a keen one for Israeli civil libertarians. Israel envisions
itself as a mosaic of different cultures with equal rights. Hopefully, it
will always be able to live up to the ideals of equality expressed in its
declaration of independence.

But if the ultimate agenda of Israeli Arab leaders is not equal rights in a
democratic Israel but the end of the Jewish state itself, then what hope is
there for tolerance or
peace?